Quote of the Day | April 18, 2008: As Common as Spilled Beer

Again from Hunter S. Thompson's 1966 Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs:

There is not a Hell's Angel riding who hasn't made the emergency-ward scene, and one of the natural results is that their fear of accidents is well tempered by a cavalier kind of disdain for physical injury. Outsiders might call it madness or other, more esoteric names . . . but the Angels inhabit a world in which violence is as common as spilled beer, and they live with it as easily as ski bums live with the risk of broken legs.

This casual acceptance of bloodletting is a key to the terror they inspire in the squares. Even a small, inept street-fighter has a tremendous advantage over the average middle-class American, who hasn't had a fight since puberty. It is a simple matter of accumulated experience, of having been hit or stomped often enough to forget the ugly panic that nice people associate with a serious fight. A man who has had his nose smashed three times in brawls will risk it again with hardly a thought. No amount of instruction in any lethal art can teach this -- not unless the instructor is a sadist, and even then it would be difficult because the student's experience would be artificially warped and limited.

Tags: Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels